Read the stories of how the healthcare system is failing trans Americans

By Nidhi Prakash | August 6, 2015 | 8:18pm

Latest

Transgender people frustrated with incompetent and humiliating medical treatment are sharing their experiences using #transhealthfail, and every story is worth reading.

The Twitter campaign was launched about a week ago by MyTransHealth, a portal for people to search for transgender-friendly doctors and clinics.

Most Popular

Despite protections in the Affordable Care Act which prohibits federally-funded health programs from discriminating because of someone’s gender identity, there are few specific local laws guaranteeing health care for trans people in most states. Trying to get non-discriminatory health care has long been a struggle for transgender men and women in the U.S. Just last month, advocates said a D.C. hospital was denying transgender patients care despite a local law that guarantees they would be covered by insurance.

“They’re violating the Human Rights Act because they specifically are saying that because someone is transgender they’re not willing to do anything,” Ruby Jade Corado, a transgender activist in D.C., told Fusion at the time.

And even if a transgender patient manage to find a doctor to treat them, they’re forced to worry about what many transgender patients say is doctors’ tendency to blame everything on their gender status or hormone therapy.

https://twitter.com/transwitchcraft/status/629115839439093761

“I’m afraid they are going to have the power to take away something that I need,” Robyn Kanner, one of the founders of MyTransHealth, told the Daily Dot. “Like I had these stomach issues and I didn’t want to go to the doctor because I was worried that they would blame my stomach problems on my hormones and make me stop taking them. It becomes this thing you build up in your head.”

The stories being shared on Twitter broach multiple problems: access, insurance coverage, and training for doctors to better understand how to treat trans patients.